Wednesday: Don Blake, head of UCI's Blake-Rowland atmospheric research lab, will talk about studies that have "shown exhaled breath contain a variety of trace gases that are potentially useful biomarkers for innovative diagnosis of disease," during a free public talk, 7 a.m., Beckman Center, next to UCI Medical School. RSVP: biosci-physci-events@uci.edu or (949) 824-7252

Oct. 28: A Boeing Delta IV rocket is tentatively scheduled to loft a Defense Support Program satellite into space from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Launch time yet to be announced.

Nov. 5:UCI will hold a star party at 7 p.m. at its observatory on campus, in University Hills, off Gabrielleno. Visitors should use the Student Center Park building, or PS4, at W. Peltason and Pereira. There will be a special emphasis on the study of Mars.

"Think of it as Apollo on steroids."

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, describing the Bush administration's plans to send humans back to the moon.

I wanted to put my foot through the TV when Griffin uttered those words on Monday.

Griffin called a news conference to announce how NASA intends to return astronauts to the moon - the first step in a long-term effort to send humans to Mars. The problem was, Griffin had few hard details. Most of his remarks were technical gibberish. And he kept invoking the memory of Project Apollo, trying to convince people that NASA is as nimble as it was in the old days.

Well, it isn't. Not when it comes to human spaceflight.

NASA has lost two space shuttles. One exploded during launch. The other disintegrated during re-entry. Fourteen astronauts were killed. The recent flight of Discovery revealed that NASA hasn't fixed all the safety problems on the remaining shuttles, even though it spent more than $1 billion to return Americans to space. The next flight is at least a year away.

And the International Space Station is literally a cosmic joke. The creaky station is unfinished, grossly over budget, and is operated by a two-person crew that is so busy just keeping the orbiter aloft it has little time to perform science. We were promised meaningful science. Life-changing science. And lots of it.

Griffin glossed over this Monday, focusing on the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), a proposed replacement for the space shuttle that would service the space station and send explorers on to the moon. He had some nice animation to go with the announcement. But in what should have been an inspiring moment, Griffin couldn't find the right words to express what NASA is trying to do, and why.

I read a transcript of the news conference and was still baffled. Here's how Griffin described how astronauts and their gear might get to the moon:

"After the Earth departure stage injects the overall payload to the moon, the payload is extracted. The lander and (CEV) are extracted and continue on to the moon, where they are injected into orbit using the service module engine."

Got that?

Griffin went on to say, "The lander concept is very notional, because implicit in our requirement is the, we believe the requirement to have a man tended or tenable lunar base capability."

Translation: NASA isn't sure what kind of spacecraft it will need to place astronauts on the moon, or where the explorers could safely live and work for an undetermined period.

Griffin wasn't even certain where astronauts will land when they return to Earth. He said it might be good to have their capsule parachute to the surface of Edwards Air Force Base in California's high desert. But he noted on Monday, "It (manned capsule) needs to land on the West Coast of some country, because we want the service module to go in the water, rather than landing on people's heads or on their cows."

The NASA chief further said that the CEV will be 10 times safer than the space shuttle. OK, but what's that based on? He didn't quantify the claim.

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